United States v. Nosal
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
844 F.3d 1024 (2016)
David Nosal (defendant), a former employee of executive-search firm Korn/Ferry, was prosecuted for trade-secret theft after he and associates secretly downloaded data from Korn/Ferry's proprietary "Search" database — built from public sources like LinkedIn but made uniquely valuable by aggregating prior search queries and outcomes — to help launch a rival firm, even persuading a remaining Korn/Ferry employee to keep feeding them Search data after they left. Korn/Ferry required strict confidentiality agreements for anyone accessing Search, and marked its outputs "Korn/Ferry Proprietary & Confidential." Nosal argued Search data couldn't be a trade secret because it came from public sources, that Korn/Ferry shared the data with others, and that he didn't know or intend his conduct would harm the firm.
Whether the way publicly available information is combined, compiled, and integrated may entitle the resulting product to protection as a trade secret.